1 gen 1949 anni - People's Public of China founded

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American officials believed that rebuilding the Japanese economy and dismantling Japan’s military would ensure prosperity and contain communism in East Asia — much like their approach in the case of Germany. Following Japan’s surrender, American occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur drafted a democratic constitution and paved the way for the restoration of Japanese sovereignty in 1951. Considering the scorched-earth war that had just ended, this was a remarkable achievement, owed partly to the imperious MacArthur but mainly to the Japanese, who embraced peace and accepted U.S. military protection. However, events on the mainland of Asia proved much more challenging to American interests.

A civil war had been raging in China since the 1930s, subsiding during the Japanese occupation only to reignite in 1945. Communists led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) battled Nationalist forces under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). Fearing a Communist victory, between 1945 and 1949 the United States provided $2 billion to Jiang’s army. Pressing Truman to “save” China, conservative Republican senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio predicted that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace than is Europe.” By 1949, Mao’s forces held the advantage, and Truman reasoned that saving Jiang would require military intervention. Unwilling to go to war in China, he cut off support and left the Nationalists to their fate. Jiang’s forces retreated and ultimately fled to Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China was formally established under Mao’s leadership on October 1, 1949.

Chinese Communists carry placards with pictures of Joseph Stalin, premier of the Soviet Union and self-proclaimed leader of global communism. Under the leadership of General Mao Zedong, the Communist Party of China defeated its rivals in a civil war and founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao’s victory meant that from East Germany to the Pacific Ocean, much of the Eurasian landmass (including Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China) was ruled by Communist governments.


Truman expected Mao to take an independent line from Moscow, as the Communist leader Tito had just done in Yugoslavia. But the new Chinese leader aligned himself with the Soviet Union, partly out of fear that the United States would re-arm the Nationalists and invade the mainland. As Cold War attitudes hardened, many Americans viewed Mao’s success as a defeat for the United States. The pro-Chinese Nationalist “China lobby” held Truman’s State Department responsible for the “loss” of China. Sensitive to these charges, the Truman administration refused to recognize “Red China” and blocked its admission to the United Nations. But the United States also pointedly declined to guarantee Taiwan’s independence, and in fact accepted the outcome on the mainland.

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